


The Way We Were

by lilsmartass



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Azkaban aftermath, Friendship, Gen, Happy Ending, Marauder fic, first person POV, possible pre-slash - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-07
Updated: 2012-10-07
Packaged: 2017-11-15 19:40:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/530967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilsmartass/pseuds/lilsmartass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: Written for my shaving square of Kink Bingo. Remus helps Sirius after Azkaban.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Way We Were

**Author's Note:**

> Rating: PG
> 
> Disclaimer: Not mine, considering what I put them through, probably for the best.
> 
> Warning/Spoilers: Assumes knowledge up to POA and Marauder back-story.
> 
> Pairing: Remus&Sirius friendship, possible pre-slash and suggestions of past relationship if those are your goggles. 
> 
> Genre: pre-slash, marauder era, first person pov

** What We Were **

****

 

 

“It’s alright,” I say, soft and low, not how I speak to him in my memories, more how I speak to traumatised Hufflepuff first years when they’re shaking after their first encounter with Snape. He tries to smile, or sneer, or offer a witty retort, but he doesn’t know how, or which, and so he nods curtly instead and holds his body so still he shakes with the tension of it, only to flinch when I bring the razor close again anyway.

“Sorry,” he bites out, looking to me, perhaps for confirmation that this is the correct social nicety since he hasn’t used any in so long.

I rock back onto my haunches, staring up at him where he is sitting on my bed. “You don’t have to be sorry,” I say, still soft and low and it is jarring that he hasn’t corrected me. _What’s with the voice? I’m not fragile Moony._ He looks different to how I remember. He’s tall still, and despite his gaunt, starved frame still clearly broad, potential to be muscular, just like he was when we were irrepressible, invincible sixteen year olds, still growing into our bodies. His face is more lined, but so is mine, and the knife job he took to his elbow length dirty hair is uneven and ragged, but it reminds me of how he used to look, blown in after Quidditch practice. _Going to slaughter Ravenclaw in the game tomorrow._ He’s clean and dressed in non descript dark robes which fit him better than anything of mine ever would, courtesy of Dumbledore. And so, other than the beard, there is nothing about him which would cause me to walk past him in the street, unknowing, unseeing. But he is different.

Perhaps it is his eyes, older and haunted, filled with grief and loss instead of the laughter and love of life which we all leaned on. _Sure, it’s bad_ now _, giants in London’s never going to be a good thing, but just think how much fun we’re going to have reading whatever rationalisation the Muggles have come up with for it tomorrow_. The oh-so-familiar black eyes are still shrewd and clever, but they are distrustful now, wary, betrayed; cleverness no longer put to pranks and jokes but to keeping those who would hurt him away. They are afraid, I suddenly realise, and with that realisation I see what is missing, what makes this old stooped man different from Padfoot.

Fear.

Padfoot was afraid of nothing; he took what the world threw at him and sneered in its face. Some thought he was reckless, but that wasn’t exactly the case. He knew just what Voldemort and his ilk were capable off, better than most of us, and he certainly didn’t have a death wish, but it was just so foreign to him to cower in the face of cruelty and threats that he couldn’t even fathom why some did it. In the depths of his very soul he knew that the only way to win was to fight the blackness, to refuse to let it have you, even if it had to destroy you to keep your light from spreading, it didn’t win if you didn’t let it change you, didn’t let it in. He would have said it differently. He would have told me I was being a girl for saying it at all, but it is still the case. But this man, this stranger, is broken and damaged and afraid in a way Padfoot never was, never knew how to be. _He knows what the dark is capable of._ They didn’t get his soul, _thank God Harry was there, thank Merlin I taught him that spell,_ but they took something. I ache for his loss. And for mine.

And my original plan, which was to tell him to close his eyes, to not look at what I was about to do, to wrap my hand tightly in his hair to keep him still and safe from the sharp edge of the razor goes out the window. It will terrify him, no matter how he rationally knows that he is safe. Fear is not rational, and he might fight back, worse, he might whimper, and that I could never bare. We had already moved from bathroom to bedroom because the impersonal, sterile white of the bathroom was more unsettling than the soft mismatched tones of the bed and cheaply papered walls. We just have to make this safe too.

“You don’t have to do this,” he says now.

“Do you want the beard?” I ask. And I don’t snap or speak loudly because he startles so easily, this fragile, glass version of the bold, unshakable man in my dreams, but I make an effort to sound normal, light-hearted, teasing, as though we are what we were before.

“...No.”

“And you can’t do it yourself.”

Padfoot would have flushed, humiliated to his very core at having to ask for help for something so simple, even from me. This stranger seemingly has no shame left in him, and that chills me almost more than the fear. “I can’t remember how.”

“And I never learned the spell for it, so it has to be this way or not at all.”

Another long silence. His eyes bore into mine, seeking the truth of my words, determining whether or not he can offer his vulnerable throat to my blade. He probably shouldn’t. I should have fought tooth and nail against his incarceration, I should have screamed his innocence, I should have visited and not left him all alone, I should have believed in him. I didn’t. But this I can do for him, so I meet his eyes steadily and hold my passive posture. “Alright,” he allows after a moment.

And it is not until I take in deep breath that I realised the air had frozen in my chest while he made his assessment. “Alright,” I echo.

This time I do not stay crouched in front of him, instead I move up to sit on the bed beside him and settle myself cross-legged, gesturing him to do the same so we are facing one another. I set the bowl of water to hover at my elbow and begin applying a little more shaving foam, what there was before has dried or dripped off. I test the water, and reheat it, but this time, before I raise the razor I say, “Do you remember when James’ dad showed us to do this?”

His eyes shoot to mine, round and uncertain. I know that before is blurry for him, good memories running together, often key ingredients where the dementors stole it irrevocably missing, but I don’t meet his eyes, don’t allow them to put me off and make me feel pity or worry. “It was that Easter of fifth year when we thought the tiny bits of bumfluff we’d managed to start growing made us look like the bees knees.” I smile softly at the memory and begin to shave the hair on his chin, tipping his head from side to side to reach each hair, noting his eyes never leave mine as though by staring at me he can absorb my memories. He feels warm and human, not like the broken dead thing I see in his eyes. “Mr. Potter dragged us all up to that huge marble bathroom the guest wing had and showed us how to make a good job of getting rid of the worst five o’clock shadows in the history of puberty. Prongs was so embarrassed, I’ve never seen him so red. And when we were done we ended up having a huge battle with the cans of shaving foam, all five of us, Mr. Potter too. We sprayed it everywhere. And when Mrs. Potter came up to find out what was happening she got hit with your _Augamenti_ , which you told her was me by the way, I never got you back for that, you bastard, and that’s when she found out we were using magic outside of school.”

Caught up in bittersweet reminiscences, I barely notice that I am finished. I put the razor down, absently running the pads of my fingers over his sharp chin and defined cheekbones to check that the texture all over is the same and I haven’t missed anything. Unthinkingly, he turns his head into my hands, and equally unthinkingly I scratch behind his ears, a gesture of affection he likes almost more as a person than as a dog. “We had to sleep in the treehouse to escape her wrath,” he adds.

“No, that was after the big prank war you and James pulled on one another that summer. I had to go home the night of the shaving foam battle; it was the wrong time of the moon.” He looks stricken at being wrong and I rub gentle circles into his scalp to calm him. “It’s fine, you remember the treehouse. It’s all still there, give it time.”

“I remember- it’s all run together.”

I shrug, “But you remember the gist? You remember how we- what we all were to each other? You remember that you were one of us?”

“I remember that I was happy,” he says, a simple breathtaking statement which brings tears to my eyes.

“Oh Padfoot,” I say, gentle voice back, stricken by his loss. I use the hand entangled in his hair to bring him in and lean close myself so our foreheads are touching, like they did when we were little boys whispering secrets, as though my very proximity can give him half of my memories, half my warmth and love, give him back the strength and laughter and light that drew me to him.

He rests against me for the space of one heartbeat. “What’s up with the voice?” He rasps then, pulling back to peer at me with quizzical teasing mixed with impatience, “I’m not fragile Moony.”

And that makes the tears fall. Padfoot is still in there somewhere, all I have to do is find him.   


End file.
